MICHEL FOUCAULT AND PORNOGRAPHY

by Wendy McElroy

"Feminist scholars, many drawing on the insights offered by Michel
Foucault, have urged us to develop new ways of thinking and speaking."(1)
So write the editors of the book Analyzing Gender. In their scholarly
work Knowing Women: Feminism and Knowledge, two different feminist
editors explain why the French philosopher Michel Foucault is quoted extensively
therein: "Foucault's discourse theory and the 'post-structuralist'
methods of analysis which depend on it have become very influential within
feminist studies."(2) Since I have an antipathy to fully one-third
of the words in the preceding sentence, I tend to screen out such scholarly
discussions of Foucault for the sake of my digestion.

In truth, I screen the man out even when he is quoted in more popular
feminist works, such the writing of the feminist Foucault-fan Judith Butler,
or Sharon Welsh's Communities of Resistance and Solidarity(3), in
which Welsh uses Foucaldian methodology to construct a feminist liberation
theology. I even ignore rather intriguing works such as Valerie Walkerdine's
SchoolGirl Fictions in which she declares: "How is this truth
constituted...Such questions, derived from the methodology of genealogy
utilized by Foucault, can help us begin to take apart this truth about
girls."(4)

Since his death in 1984, there has been something of a backlash against
Foucault within the feminist movement.(5) This is exemplified by the scholarly
work After Foucault which contains two chapters "Disciplining
Women: Michel Foucault and the Power of Feminist Discourse" and "Feminism
and the Power of Foucaldian Discourse". The two chapters take opposing
views on the question "Is Foucaldian feminism a contradiction in terms?"(6)
In the popular press, the backlash has been expressed by the iconoclastic
Camille Paglia whose book Sex, Art, and American Culture devotes
a large part of a large chapter to Foucault-bashing.(7)

With the controversy drawing me, I began to wonder 'why?'. Why and how
did Foucault influence feminism? And why are some feminists now finding
fault with him? I knew that his area of influence was in the interpretation
and meaning of language, and that his intellectual style was akin to that
of the deconstruc- tionist Jacques Derrida. As I explored Foucault's work,
the answer became no clearer. He argued vehemently against Freudian theory,
which would endear him to feminists who traditionally view Freud as an
ideological arch-enemy.(8) But this must be balanced against Foucault's
full-frontal attack on Marx. The touchstone gender feminism, Catherine
Mackinnon openly refers to her position as 'post-Marxist feminism'. And
many of the defining aspects of contempo- rary feminism -- for example,
the male/female class analysis and the use of terminology such as 'exploitation'
-- derives directly from Marxist theory. Foucault's anti-Marxist onslaught
must bridle some feminist theorists.

Added to this blurred picture is the fact that contemporary feminists
have a great bias against quoting or crediting males when charting the
development of 'the movement'. Why, then, is Foucault quoted and credited
with some regularity? The answer began to fascinate me, as I came to realize
that it held the key to making sense of another issue within feminism by
which I had been utterly baffled for years. That is: why is there so much
stress placed upon the language as a source of the oppression of women?
Indeed, sometimes language is considered to be the source. Thus,
women fly into rages at being called 'Madam Chairman' and insist upon the
wholesale replacement of the generic 'he' with the ungainly 'he/she'.

For me, the issue of language led to a dramatic encounter on a practical
matter about a year ago. I was sitting in the lobby of a Toronto radio
station that wanted to hold an on-air debate on pornography between me
and the prominent Canadian gender-feminist Susan Cole, who is an editor
at Toronto's largest magazine.

At this point I should pause to provide necessary background. I view
pornography as words and images depicting the graphic sex of consenting
adults. Gender-feminists, such as Susan, consider pornography to be in-and-of-itself
an act of violence against women that is instrumental in perpetuating male
oppression.

To Susan, pornography is political and personal oppression. To me, pornography
is a personal choice and the anti-porn drive is political oppression. In
Canada, this debate is more than academic. Through its decision in the
Butler vs. Her Majesty case, the Supreme Court of Canada adopted Catherine
MacKinnon's definition of obscenity nearly word for word into Canadian
law. This 1992 court decision -- which was vigorously championed by most
feminists in Canada and the US -- allows Canadian customs to seize what
it judges to be pornography at the border as the material is being imported.
In reaching the Butler decision, the Supreme Court acknowledged that it
was violating freedom of speech, but it deemed the possible harm that pornography
could inflict on women to be of greater legal significance.

The spring 1993 issue of FeministBookstoreNews
described the impact of this measure during its first year: "The Butler
decision has been used...only to seize lesbian, gay and feminist material."
The two primary targets have been feminist-lesbian bookstores -- the Glad
Day Bookstore in Toronto and Little Sisters in Vancouver. Customs Canada
has blocked shipments to these bookstores of even innocuous material --
of mainstream science fiction writers, for example -- that any other Canadian
bookstore is able to import freely.

When I drove into Toronto for the radio program, I resolved to ask Susan,
with whom I'd debated before, how she reacted to lesbian bookstores being
persecuted by legislation that she had championed. Susan is an open activist
for lesbian rights, and lives the lesbian lifestyle. She has fought for
decades to have lesbian literature published, plays produced, voices heard.
It is not possible to doubt her commitment to lesbianism, both as a sexual
choice and as an aspect of feminist ideology. Indeed, she is a personal
friend of the owner of one customs-afflicted bookstore.

I asked my question. Susan expressed regret although her expression
showed absolutely no emotion. I had the impression that this was a question
she had answered many times, and her response was polished to a gleam.
"I stand firmly behind the Butler decision", she said to me without
hesitation, "and I would campaign for it again, if necessary."
Lesbian bookstores were acceptable casualties in the war against pornography.

Susan's reaction reminded me of another I'd read about. One of the books
seized temporarily by Customs Canada was a gender feminist work by Andrea
Dworkin -- also a lesbian activist who applauded the Butler decision. Dworkin
declared that having her work seized was a price she was willing to pay
to stop pornography. It is important to understand the megomanical nature
of Dworkin to appreciate the depth of sacrifice represented by her declaration.
This is the woman who recently demanded that a feminist petitioning her
for an interview first write a lengthy letter demonstrating 'familiarity
with my work'. Now Dworkin was willing to have that work suppressed.

Again, the same word arose that has haunted most of my life: why?

To me, pornography is words and images toward which my political position
can be reduced to the childhood chant "sticks and stones may break
my bones..." Needless to say, there is what could be called 'cognitive
dissonance' between my position on pornography and that of Susan Cole,
Catharine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin.

How far apart are we? Consider a statement MacKinnon made about pornography
-- specially referring to Playboy and Penthouse. The statement was made
during a speech she delivered to a gay lawyers association. There MacKinnon
asked what would have happened if pictures had been taken at Auschwitz
"and then marketed?" She went on to ask why such markerting is
different from pornography. The former, she declared, is recognized as
an atrocity; in the latter, the people are not considered real, "because
they are women."

Declarations like these are the rhetorical equivalent of thermo-nuclear
war, and there is a natural tendency for reasonable people to dismiss them.
But it is important not to do so, because it is precisely such statements
that allowed the 1992 Butler decision. In that same year, it almost led
to the passage of the Victims of Pornography Compensation Act in the states.
The Act was blocked by the efforts of an organization called Feminist for
Free Expression, a group of largely liberal feminists who banded together
specifically to address that particular piece of legislation.

The question repeats itself: Why? Why is it that -- when intelligent
women look at words and images that depict consenting adults having sex,
they see a sexual violence so profound that they draw parallels to the
Holocaust? Indeed, Dworkin doesn't even draw a parallel: she outright calls
pornography 'genocide against women'.

The key to understanding 'why?' lies in the fundamentals of gender feminist
theory. It lies in the idea of 'gender', which is strongly linked to Marx,
and in the interpretation of culture, which is strongly linked to Foucault.

Perhaps the pivotal book in the development of gender feminism was Kate
Millett's SexualPolitics [1970], which argued that women
throughout history had been "confined to the cultural level of animal
life" by men who used them as sexual objects and breeding stock. According
to gender feminists, only a profound political difference between the two
sexes can explain why women are and have been the constant victims of men.
There must be an unbreachable schism between the interests of men -- as
a class -- and the interests of women -- as a class.

This class analysis is derived from Marxism, especially from the work
of Friedrich Engels, who traced the institutional oppression of women back
to the Industrial Revolution. Yet there is no place within Marxist ideology
for gender. In Marxism, your political class interests are defined by your
relationship to the means of production: are you a capitalist or a worker?
It makes no reference to whether you are a man or a woman.

Gender feminism diverges from Marxism by redefining the class structure.
It claims that there are two different classes of people with entirely
separate and antagonistic interests: Men and women. Through male power
-- called patriarchy -- men oppress women. They have throughout history,
they will do so in the future. Why? Because they are men and that is their
class nature. Consider the words of MacKinnon in Toward a Feminist Theory
of the State: "Heterosexuality...institutionalizes male sexual
dominance and female sexual submission."(9)

The oppression lies within male biology itself.

In this process of oppression, many feminists point to pornography as
the main mechanism that explains the incredible staying power of the male
power structure. As Page Mellish of the group Feminists Fighting Pornography
declared, "There's no feminist issue that isn't rooted in the porn
problem." Pornography is seen to be the crucial thread in the tapestry
of male oppression -- a thread that, if you pull it loose will cause
the tapestry to unravel.

To understand 'why' pornography is so crucial, it is necessary to appreciate
the legacy of Foucault and those of his philosophical ilk. Only then does
it become clear why pornography is considered to be genocide and why almost
no sacrifice in the war against it is too high. The key idea of the legacy
is that sex is a social construct. This concept is basically derived from
Foucault, whose landmark book Les mots et les choses appeared in
1966.

Although the book is not primarily about sexuality, in the body of his
work, Foucault argues that history and culture are indispensable in understanding
sexuality. This hypothesis is not a controversial one. But then Foucault
introduces the idea of an "episteme" which means "knowledge"
in Greek. An episteme of a culture is its single and self-enclosed totality
that includes its language, attitudes, ideas, science: it is all the paradigms
of that society. It is the way that a specific culture or era approaches
the world.

As history progresses, one episteme replaces another. That of the Middle
Ages is replaced by that of the Renaissance and, then, a new era is said
to dawn. The destiny of words and things -- the literal translation of
his title LesMotsandLesChoses --
is intertwined. The episteme determines how the people within that era
think. It determines who they are and what they will do.

Take, as an all-important example for feminism, the human body. Most
philosophers assume that there is a pre-cultural human body. In other words,
they assume that history and culture do not alter the permanence of mankind's
biology. But for Foucault, the human body lives in the episteme -- it lives
in a culturally constituted world. By this he means that the human body
is constructed by society: the body is a 'social construct.' Even its physiological
"givens" have been produced by the medical science of our time.

Foucault devotes an entire treatise entitled The Birth of the Clinic
to the study of what he calls the "medical gaze," which he
says determines the human body. It is through the medical gaze that the
body is objectified and converted into a well-ordered thing that medicine
then seeks to control through surgery, diet, drugs, and so forth. But
the medical gaze of the eighteenth century was different from that of the
twentieth century. The episteme was different. Therefore, the eighteenth
century human body was different from the twentieth century one. The body
itself is redefined by each society that examines it.

The most important factor in defining the human body and sexuality are
the texts that are written and spoken about them. As a way understanding
this point, consider the Victorian epoch of repressed sexuality in the
late nineteenth century. A common approach is to look at its plays and
literature, the songs and newspapers -- in other words thetexts
of Victorian society -- and to conclude that the texts reflect a repressed,
sexually- horrified culture. Foucault sees exactly the opposite. He be-
lieves that the society reflects the texts. The text cause the society,
and not vice versa. The texts cause the repression.

In her essay "Foucault, feminism and questions of identity,"
Susan Bordo explores a contemporary example of this phenomenon. She argues
that our beauty culture, "with its 'tyranny of slenderness' produces
pathological forms of subjectivity that might also be understood as a crystallization
of the cultural production of 'normal' feminity."(10)

It is important to stress: Foucault (and Bordo) is not saying that society
is influenced by the words and images that flow through it: he is saying
that the texts create the episteme of the society, which creates the society
itself. He claims that speaking and writing about a repressed sexuality
caused the repression of sexuality that characterized the Victorian era.
In her essay "Feminism, Criticism and Foucault", Biddy Martin
explains of the philosopher: "His 'History of Sexuality' states very
clearly that discourses on sexuality, not sexual acts and their histories,
are the essential place to grasp the working of power in modern society."(11)

Words and texts -- not acts -- are the keys to how power works. Remember
this the next time you are puzzled by the gemder feminist insistence on
using politically correct language -- for example, in using the word 'herstory'
instead of 'history', -- or the demand that lesbian and gay characters
be included in children's literature and schoolbooks -- or on their penchance
for re-writing events to include the voices of women, even when those voices
were insignificant to the actual events. Gender feminists are trying to
correct the texts and the language that they believe define women.

Back track a moment to Foucault's denial that the idea of a human body,
of "man" objectively exists. Indeed, for him, "man...is
probably no more than a kind of rift in the order of things..." The
concept of "man" is up for grabs in Foucault's rampant historical
relativism.

Now, gender-feminists come along and add the twist "if there is
no objective man, there is no objective woman either." In doing so,
gender feminists reject what they call 'sexual essentialism', which is
the notion that sex is a natural force that exists prior to women's exposure
to society or to social/political institutions. Sexual essentialism says
that there is something natural rather than cultural about deeply held
urges such as motherhood or a disposition toward heterosexuality. There
is something natural about the general relationship between men and women
which spans centuries, cultures and religions.

Gender-feminists reject such sexual essentialism, the idea that sex
is based on biology. After all, according to Foucaldian-type analysis,
biology itself is shifting sand with no lasting definition. Gender-feminists
deny that women have natural tendencies, such as motherhood. Even deeply
felt sexual preferences, such as heterosexuality or homosexuality, are
not seen as matters of biology but of society's ideology...which is largely
detemined by the texts of society.

[This explains a common phenomenon in feminism about 15 years ago. This
was when lesbian feminists urged heterosexual feminists to stop sleeping
with the enemy, aka men. Our sexual orientation was seen to be a political
choice, not a biological tendency.]

Gender-feminists argue that those who consider women's sexuality to
be biological are taking sides with the conservative anti-feminists who
maintain that biology determines women. Biology makes women inevitably
weaker than men, or less intelligence or slated for domesticity, or...
In short, anyone who claims women's sexuality comes from biology is blaming
the victim for her own oppression.

The idea that sex is a social construct is good news to gender-feminists.
After all, if sex has been constructed, then it can be deconstructed and
put back together correctly. How?

In gender feminist theory, you have two classes of people with inherently
antagonistic interests: men and women. You have a definition of sexuality
-- of the woman's body itself -- which is up for political/cultural grabs
through the episteme of society. And the single most important factor in
the definition are the texts of society. First and foremost among those
texts is pornography. The question now becomes: which class controls the
texts through which a woman's body is defined?

This is what feminists refer to when they say 'pornography defines women,
or 'pornography causes rape', 'pornography IS rape', or that every problem
women have can be traced back to pornography. It is why lesbian-activists
are willing to promote legislation that suppresses 'words and images' even
though they know will be used to persecute lesbian bookstores.

With this new perspective, read a passage from Susan Brownmiller's in
AgainstOurWill, which is typical of gender-feminist
literature:

"Pornography, like rape, is a male invention, designed to dehumanize
women, to reduce the female to an object of sexual access, not to free
sensuality from moralistic or parental inhibition. The staple of porn will
always be the naked body, breasts and genitals exposed, because as man
devised it, her naked body is the female's 'shame', her private parts the
private property of man, while his are the ancient, holy, universal, patriarchal
instrument of his power, his rule by force over her. Pornography is the
undiluted essence of anti-female propaganda."

Let me act as a guide to Brownmiller's words: pornography -- graphic
sex -- is an invention of man; as an invention, it is designed to dehumanize
women; the naked female body asmendevisedit
is the female's shame; his private parts are "his rule of force over
her"; pornography is anti-female propaganda. In other words, pornography
is the text which expresses man's hatred of woman and which socially constructs
her oppression.

[Please note that I am not saying Brownmiller or any other particular
feminist is a Foucaldian. I am merely stating that his sort of linguistic
interpretation has so permeated the gender- feminist approach that Brownmiller
and similar writers use his methodology, whether or not they are conscious
of doing so.]

It took me a long time to understand that -- in discussions with gender-feminists
-- I was speaking gibberish to them. I talked about choice, "a woman's
body, a woman's right". By their analysis, however, women have been
socially determined by men: we have been sexually constructed by the enemy
class. I can no more say that I choose my sexuality than a concentration
camp prisoner can claim to choose the menu of her evening meal. I take
what gets served up, and sometimes a prisoner, such as me, is so brainwashed
as to believe she is choosing. Indeed, Foucault is arguably best remembered
for his analysis of suppressed groups, such as prisoners and mental patients.
Phyllis Chesler, a key figure in feminist psychiatric work, refers to Foucault's
Madness and Civilization as "a brilliant essay" which
shows how the prestige of patriarchy is linked with the "dialectic
of the Family", especially the father.(12)

To gender-feminist, "a woman's body, a woman's right" is just
another patriarchial prison sentence. It is just another line of text through
which men politically define who I -- as a woman --am.